People naturally invest time and effort in the entities and ideas they suspect will be powerful.

For example, currying favor with people they think are powerful or might become powerful.

It's a kind of emergent "yes, and" survival of the fittest / most powerful.

It's not so much that this powerful person creates the wave they surf.

It's that the surrounding population sees their initial ripple, decides to bet on it, and rushes to it.

That extra energy creates a larger wave, which attracts more energy.

This can be a compounding loop for a thing many people believe is powerful.

But compounding loops run fast in both directions; such a leader suffering a humiliating defeat will lose many followers, which will start a spiral in the other direction.

Such a leader will avoid humiliation as though it was death.

This is one of the reasons for an ecosystem or emergent human system the perception of momentum is so important.